Rob Manfred watched the Milwaukee Brewers win the World Series with a payroll that ranked them 19th in baseball and the MLB commissioner saw a reason to fight.
The franchise had waited 44 years to win a World Series.
"Once every 40 years is not enough," Manfred said, unofficially kicking off the lockout season.
Because that is the battle in one sentence and that is the reason the sport is about to be shut down.
Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 1. Owners are expected to lock out the players the next day. Once they do, everything except the back and forth between the league and the union shuts down. Nobody signs, nobody gets traded, no spring training and no season until there is a new deal in place.
It will be the second lockout in five years. The last one lasted 99 days.
The owners want a salary cap. They players have refused one for 30 years.
USA TODAY's Bob Nightengale reported that a growing number of executives expect the 2027 season to open around Memorial Day weekend.
Here's how baseball got here, and what happens next.
Latest on the MLB lockout
Nov. 3 update: MLB blinked, a little.
The league proposed Tuesday to push its salary cap back a year, to the 2028 season. The league said teams would have a hard time navigating free agency with that much uncertainty hanging over them. The rest of its offer would still take effect in 2027.
That includes raising the minimum salary to $1 million and letting players reach free agency after five years instead of six. The union's reaction was as expected. Players still see 2027 as a bad deal, with no increase to the luxury tax thresholds among the sticking points.
When does the MLB lockout start?
The current CBA expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 1. Without a new agreement, the lockout begins on Dec. 2.
Owners aren't required to lock anyone out when a contract expires. Manfred has made it clear that will.
Neither side is interested in extending the current deal to buy time. Both have called that unlikely.
Until then, it's a normal offseason on fast-forward.
Key dates before the deadline:
- Nov. 17: Deadline for free agents to accept or turn down a qualifying offer. That's a one-year, $23.15 million deal teams can offer their own free agents so they get a draft pick if the player leaves.
- Nov. 17: Deadline for teams to protect prospects from the Rule 5 draft by adding them to the 40-man roster.
- Nov. 17-19: Owners meetings in New York City.
- Nov. 20: Deadline for teams to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players.
- Late November: The union's annual player meeting in Arizona, which overlaps with the final days of bargaining.
- Dec. 1, 11:59 p.m. ET the deal expires.
Why is MLB headed for a lockout? The salary cap fight
Baseball is the only one of the four major North American leagues without a salary cap.
The owners want one.
The league's newest proposal sets a cap of $258.2 million and a floor of $118.2 million, starting in 2028. Both numbers include player benefits. The current luxury tax threshold, the line where big spenders start paying penalties, sits at $244 million.
Eight teams would have to cut a combined $528 million to get under that cap. Twelve would have to add a combined $636 million to reach the floor.
The Dodgers ran a $397 million payroll for luxury tax purposes in 2026.
That's $161.8 million over the new cap.
The Phillies are projected at $193 million for 2027 before they sign anyone.
The league's first offer, in May, would have put a $245.3 million cap and $171.2 million floor in place for 2027. Tuesday's version buys teams a year. It also pulls two of the league's sweeteners into 2027 whether or not players accept a cap: a $1 million minimum salary, up from $780,000, and free agency after five years.
Both come only with a cap.
The players aren't interested. Bruce Meyer, the union's interim executive director, has called a salary cap "a form of institutionalized collusion," He estimated players would have lost more than half a billion dollars had the league's system been in place in 2026.
Meyer took over in February after Tony Clark resigned. He has done this before. He was the union's lead negotiator on the deal that ended the last lockout.
The union has proposed nearly doubling the minimum salary from $780,000 to $1.5 million. It also wants the bonus pool for young players not yet eligible for arbitration raised from 450 million to $180 million.
That's still a $500,000 gap at the bottom of the pay scale.
Both sides took some talking points from the World Series. The Brewers' payroll ranked 19th as of Aug. 31. The Rays, the team they beat, ranked 25th. Manfred sees proof that small markets need help. Meyer argued the opposite.
What happens to MLB free agency during a lockout?
Nothing. It all stops.
No signings. No trades involving anyone on the a 40-man roster. Team employees can't even call those players. Players are barred from team facilities, so anyone rehabbing an injury has to do it somewhere else.
That's why the weeks before the Dec. 1 deadline can get wild.
Before the last lockout, teams committed more than $1.9 billion to free agents. Some $1.4 billion of it came on Dec.1 2021 alone, a one-day record, according to the Associated Press.
Tarik Skubal is the biggest name in this year's class. Before free agency opened, 78% of an ESPN panel of experts predicted the two-time Cy Young Award winner would sign before the lockout. The marks he's chasing are Yoshinobu Yamamoto's $325 million, the biggest contract for a pitcher, and Max Scherzer's $43.3 million a year.
Teruaki Sato's clock is even tighter.
The Hanshin Tigers third baseman was posted by his Japanese team, along with pitchers Kaima Taira and Hiromi Itoh. Posting opens a window to negotiate with MLB clubs, and it usually lasts 45 days. MLB has said it will not alter that for the lockout as they did in 2021.
If they miss the deadline, they play in Japan next year.
The Winter Meetings, set for Dec. 7-9 in San Diego, are expected to be canceled. In 2021, the lockout wiped out the major league phase of the Rule 5 draft for the first time since 1920. Arbitration hearings won't happen during a lockout either.
What's the difference between a lockout and a strike?
A strike is the players walking off the job. A lockout is the owners locking the door and shutting down business.
Owners like to do it in the winter. It takes away the player's strongest move, which is striking in the middle of a season when the games and money matter most.
Baseball learned that one the hard way in 1994 when a players' strike canceled the World Series.
Before the last lockout, Manfred called it "The best mechanism to protect the 2022 season."
The union has its own history lesson. The last time owners pushed this hard for a cap, more than 30 years ago, it led to the longest work stoppage the sport has seen.
Will the 2027 MLB season start on time?
On paper, yes.
The 2027 schedule was announced early by MLB with a game on March 24 and the traditional Opening Day on March 25.
Will those games get played? nobody knows.
The number that everyone says is important is 60.
MLB's national TV contracts automatically extend through 2029 if a work stoppage wipes out at least 60 games per team in 2027, The Athletic reported. That would push back the league's plan to remake its media business by a full year.
Sixty games gets you to late May.
Manfred has said he is confident a deal will come early enough to protect the season.
How long did past MLB lockouts last?
Baseball has had nine work stoppages five strikes and four lockouts. This would be the 10th.
Lockouts have usually ended fast. The first three each wrapped up within 40 days, and none cost a regular-season game.
The 1990 lockout lasted 32 days. It ate most of spring training and pushed Opening Day back a week. Teams still played a full schedule.
Then came 2021.
That one ran 99 days, from Dec. 2 to March 10. Manfred canceled the first two series of the season before a deal finally got done. The games were made up, Opening Day moved from March 31 to April 7, and teams played all 162 games.
Do MLB players get paid during a lockout?
Not in the winter – but they would not be anyway. Players collect their salaries only during the regular season. Not in the offseason and not in spring training. So an offseason lockout doesn't cost anyone a paycheck. So even if spring training gets wiped out, it's not costing players a pay check yet.
Signing bonuses and deferred money still get paid.
That changes in March. Lose 60 games and players lose as many as four paychecks, according to reports.
What happens to minor leaguers during an MLB lockout?
Most of them keep playing.
The union has represented minor leaguers since 2022, but they work under a separate agreement that's still in force. They'll play a 2027 season either way.
The exception is prospects on 40-man rosters. They belong to the major league bargaining unit, so they're locked out with everybody else. No minor league camp. No team facilities. No games.
MLB told teams it won't stop locked-out players from heading to foreign leagues or winter ball.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The MLB lockout is coming. Here's what baseball fans need to know right now.
